Japanese People

FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT JAPANESE PEOPLE - PAGE 3

Japanese Emperor Hirohito certainly was no saint. Yet he served a useful purpose as a symbol of continuity for the Japanese people after their devastating defeat in World War II. It is to the credit of American policy that Hirohito was allowed to remain on his throne despite his involvement with the militarists who plundered Asia and carried out vicious attacks against civilian as well as military targets. This is in stark contrast to the attitude after World War I, when making the world "safe for democracy" meant getting rid of the monarchies on the losing side, regardless of their potential for stabilizing their dispirited nations.

President Bush's recent call for a "trialogue" among the U.S., Japan and Europe to promote world economic harmony can come to fruition only with a significant reduction in the $50 billion trade deficit with Japan. While the recent trade agreements have led to much good will between the two Pacific trading partners, the prospect of inflation or a recession will push the deficit higher. A $60 billion deficit would be politically untenable in this country and trade concessions during a financial slowdown would not be forthcoming from the Japanese.

Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone Wednesday urged his successor, Noboru Takeshita, to "pursue a middle-of-the-road" foreign policy sprinkled with a "healthy combination of nationalism and internationalism." "I would like to see the Japanese people respected in the international community like Americans and Chinese," Nakasone said at his 17th and final press conference before leaving office Friday. "Although the Japanese people have become wealthy, Japan's contribution to the world is not enough."

Joan Beck's column "Japan should quit trying to distort WWII history" (Dec. 8) made a long-overdue statement. As someone who probably owes his life to the atomic bombs, I have some things to add. After participating as a young U.S. naval officer in the invasions of France, the Philippines and Okinawa and enduring 144 kamikaze suicide air attacks, I served on the staff of an admiral who helped plan the final assault on the Japanese homeland....

Almost all Japanese people and American people think that you can`t sell many cars during this worldwide recession, even in Japan. The U.S.-made cars lost public confidence for three reasons in Japan. One is that their fuel efficiency is very bad. Many Japanese people think that Detroit keeps turning out gas-guzzling cars. The second is the bad repair system. When you take your American car in for repairs, you have to wait a long time because American automakers do not supply U.S. parts to Japan quickly.

Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita admitted Tuesday that he had received about $750,000 in political donations from Recruit Co., a firm accused of bribing some 130 Japanese politicians and bureaucrats in return for political favors. Takeshita, appearing before a special budget session of Japan's lower house of parliament, said the 95 million yen he received from the Recruit Co. from 1986 to 1987 came in the form of legal donations to his political faction in the Liberal Democratic Party and in the form of purchases of tickets to two fundraising parties held in 1987.

Americans may think the Statue of Liberty belongs to them, but judging from the number of foreign journalists jamming New York to cover her 100th birthday party, a bit of her seems to belong to almost everybody in the world. Journalists from 36 nations will be sending home stories of festivities surrounding the statue throughout Liberty Weekend--a massive block party expected to attract as many as 13 million people to Lower Manhattan from Thursday through Sunday. David Wolper, who is producing the extravaganza, said that worldwide--the U.S. included--599 news organizations applied for 8,069 individual reporter's credentials.

Anyone expecting sweeping political reforms to follow Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita's resignation is in for disappointment. Japan's unique system of kinken-seiji, or money politics, is so well ingrained and so much a part of the political process that to dismantle it would require reweaving the fabric of Japanese society. "The fact is: Japan is the world's most dynamic and efficient money machine right now," said political scientist Hiroko Uno. "It will be impossible for a nation that prizes money so much to discard it in favor of principles such as honesty and fair play that offer no profit."

From this column, Dec. 16, 1991: "It started as a whisper among people interested both in sports and in the future of America's mass culture. A whimsical question, not to be taken seriously. . . . "The question is this: Is it possible that a major-league baseball team will be bought by the Japanese?" The column said Japanese ownership of a U.S. team was a real possibility, and that "if it happens one of these years, and our country goes berserk at the news, don`t say you never thought about it before.

The subject of Japanese military involvement caused a noticeable rumbling in the U.S. during the war in the Persian Gulf. Japan pledged to send money to assist the allied war effort, but sent no soldiers. This bothered a lot of Americans. The usual comment was along the lines of: "We send our men and women to risk their lives, and the Japanese write a check." There was a definite surge of opinion in the U.S. that the Japanese were getting off easy-that their failure to send soldiers was yet another manifestation of their growing economic clout.